A Wintergreen Cure

There are many ways to die.

When I started ALG - the Affirmation of Life Group - I didn’t know that our steps toward light would end in darkness. We thought we were stepping out in faith. As it turns out, the Universe doesn’t reward good intentions – only good results.

ALG wasn’t born in a basement or a garage. We took over an old restaurant that had started life as a dance studio. I used to tell our ‘groupies’ (that’s what they called themselves), “A stage, a bar, and a bum like me – it’s a simple recipe for a good life!” But when my partner Jonadab took over (while I battled cancer), that’s when things fell apart. He took a business raking in triple-digit profits, and ran it into the ground. He tried to pin the blame on me as I lay dying in that hospital, but I didn’t have any control over what he and Jose were doing. I was just trying to stay alive.

I could even see his point about trying to expand the business. That’s what you do in any business, right? You take something that’s working, and you add that extra ‘magic sauce’ that will get even more groupies in the door. So if that means turning the usual exercise classes into tantric yoga, well, that’s what the groupies want – so give them what they want. Who wouldn’t want yoga sessions to be as impactful as possible? You don’t want people falling asleep in sessions, but if they work all day – what’s the harm in a little performance enhancement to the vitamin cocktails at the juice bar? It’s a way to juice up the performance. And if you perform well, then you go home and you sleep well, and then you go to work and perform well.

A simple recipe for a good life, like I said.

And some groupies are just a little privacy-conscious. They want to participate in a group, but they have a fear of judgement – or maybe they want to avoid group censure. Weird scars, or a limp. So you get a few cameras installed and let them interact on a private channel, so they don’t attract any unwelcome attention. It wouldn’t hurt if they were celebrities – they might tell their friends. You know, relationship marketing.

It's just good business, after all. I could understand that when Bad Jon explained it (that was our little nickname for him). But I couldn’t see why he tried to say these things in court, with lawyers sitting at tables with their glum judgmental faces and all the cameras clicking. Those people wouldn’t understand what we were about, or what we were trying to build.

If it hadn’t been for that girl flapping her gums about her weird take on the ALG group, everything would have been fine. She wasn’t really a part of anything much, and she tried to make us look bad by pronouncing it “algae (al-gee)”, like it was pond scum or something. A detective got the idea that ALG was some sort of human trafficking drugs-and-orgies group posing as a health and fitness club. Just because Jose took a group in our white van for a secret beach jaunt, and forgot to tell them it was Clothing Optional Day. It wasn’t his fault that an undercover cop was on the beach hawking Ecstasy and other things, and some of the group gave in to old patterns. We’d warned them, but kids will be kids.

So it was just a few misunderstandings. I’m sure my lawyer knows how to get the judge to see reason, but I understand that it’ll take some time.

I just hope that the judge doesn’t have a law clerk who went to the ALG Happy Hour. That really was a disaster. I read about it on my hospital bed, when I was allowed a phone. One of our Instagrammer groupies posted shots of the boxing class that took Fight Club a little too seriously. (I nearly had a heart attack – the nurses were really concerned about my recovery.)

That whole group was involved in the legal system; our place was their outlet to blow off a little steam. They thought it would enhance their workouts if they didn’t tell anyone about the boxing lessons. It was fine until one of the groupies got the bright idea to inject mercury into his gloves, and then the next week, another groupie tried to inject liquid nitrogen into his gloves, to reduce the heat buildup during really intense rounds. One of the girls couldn’t resist the urge to post it for the world to see, so everyone had a say in what they were doing. Everyone wanted to know who started it, who got the ideas about injecting things into gloves – and so on. It didn’t help that one of the posts showed a “Welcome to ALG” banner in the background. That was just a recipe for misinterpretation, like we were encouraging them to need hospital visits or something.

So – I think I’ve explained everything. I don’t know if there’s much more to say, now that Jonadab and Jose took in too much wintergreen and eucalyptus. They needed some relaxation after getting grilled in court about the beach tour and the Happy Hour incidents, but it just happened to be the wrong combo. Sometimes the cure is worse than what ails you.

I think the detective really messed up in his report when he said that I deliberately left those two essential oils ‘in a prominent spot’, like I was hinting to J&J that they needed to atone for their mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m sure they just weren’t thinking, and took too much. It happens sometimes, but I don’t see why I should take the blame for it. They knew where we kept the droppers and the measuring spoons. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but they always were a little careless. Plus, I had just gotten out of the hospital. All I was thinking about was getting better – I wanted them to get better too. Is that a crime?

It's strange to think about, that something so good for you, so natural, could also end up acting like a poison. We knew about some of the usual things to avoid – Angel’s Trumpets, belladonna, pufferfish – but wintergreen? It’s in gum and breath mints. How was I supposed to know that Bad Jon had a Warfarin prescription? It’s not my fault that he inherited an afib problem.

Can I go now?